All the Beautiful Lies(9)

It turned out that Alice didn’t need to worry. For the first two years of the marriage, Edith spent her mornings doing aerobics in the living room; Jake had a VCR, and Edith had invested in a slew of aerobics tapes. In the afternoons she would plan that night’s dinner, following intricate recipes from cookbooks with French-sounding names. When Alice came home from school, her mother was usually in the kitchen, watching an afternoon talk show on the cabinet-mounted television, preparing ingredients and drinking a red smoothie that Alice knew contained as much vodka as it did strawberries. As soon as Jake walked through the door she would make proper drinks, martinis usually, and a Shirley Temple for Alice, and the televisions would be turned off.

By dinnertime Edith was slurring her words and barely picking at her food. After dinner Alice’s job was to wash the dishes, although Jake usually helped by bringing them to her. Edith took a brandy into the living room. “I just need to relax,” she would always say. She’d turn the television on, and finish the brandy and then she’d be asleep. Jake never seemed to mind. He’d gently slide her down the white leather sectional, then take control of the remote, usually finding a game to watch. If Alice wasn’t doing homework in her room, she’d watch television with him, and he’d sometimes let her pick what she wanted to watch.

But usually Alice stayed in her room. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to watch TV with Jake. She loved television. It was that she couldn’t stand the sight of her mother passed out on the couch, her mouth open, emitting raspy snores. Jake didn’t seem to notice, only occasionally shifting her when the snores got too loud.

One night, after Alice had finished her homework, she came out to the living room. Jake was watching hockey, and Edith was facedown on the couch, a little pool of drool next to her mouth. “Gross,” Alice said before she could stop herself.

Jake laughed. “Your mother likes to drink,” he said, as though that particular thought had just occurred to him.

“Does it bother you?”

“Not too much. People are who they are, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

“You finish your homework?” Jake glanced over at the empty recliner, and Alice took her usual seat, accepting the remote control from her stepfather.

“Yeah, I didn’t have too much to do. Just algebra, and some reading.” Alice flipped the channel to CBS. My Sister Sam was on.

“School going all right for you?”

Alice shrugged. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“You have friends?”

“Gina.”

“Oh, right, Gina.”

Alice turned to look at Jake, still staring at the television, lips pressed together as though he was concentrating on what was happening on the screen. Alice assumed he must be asking these questions only because Edith had asked him to, or because they’d been discussing it together. But discussing what? The fact that Alice seemed to have only one friend at school?

The truth was that Alice hated Kennewick High School and the students who went there. The incident that sparked this hate had happened her freshman year, when she’d met a senior named Scott Morgan because their lockers were next to one another. He was a lacrosse player with a good smile and bad acne on his forehead. When Alice told him she was from Biddeford, he said that his dad owned a car dealership there, and he mentioned a pizza place that Alice knew. Whenever he saw her again at the lockers, he’d always ask, “How’s Biddeford?” as though she still lived there. On the first warm day in April, he told her about a party that was happening on the beach at midnight. It had been easy for Alice to sneak away; she didn’t even need to be quiet, knowing her mom could sleep through pretty much anything. She wore cutoff shorts and a big hoodie, and carried a bottle of Sprite that she’d spiked with some of her mother’s vodka—not because she wanted to drink it, but because you brought alcohol to a party. When she got to the section of beach that Scott had mentioned, Scott was there alone. He handed Alice an open can of beer and said, “I lied about the party.”

“How come?”

“To get you here alone.”

They were on the south end of the public beach, near the playground and a picnic area shaded by pine trees. They walked to the darkest bench and began to kiss, Scott’s hands instantly fumbling under Alice’s hoodie, and pulling at the zipper of her shorts.

“You a virgin?” Scott asked, when he’d gotten Alice’s shorts down around her ankles.

“Yes.”

“My friend told me that all the girls in Biddeford do it in middle school.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Do you want to do it now?”

“Sure,” Alice said. It wasn’t something she had planned, but now that it was happening, it seemed like the right thing to do. Clearly, it was what they did in Kennewick, and if she let it happen now, then she wouldn’t need to worry about it later. And Scott was opening up a small plastic packet that looked like a condom, so she wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Alice reached down to touch him, but he bucked his hips back, saying, “I don’t want to come yet.” But even without being touched he only got about halfway inside of her before he shuddered, his jaw clenching, tendons tensing in his neck.

“Don’t fucking tell anyone, okay?” he said, as he pulled out of her, holding on to the condom.