And that’s not even the worst of it. Alice might excel at evading the truth with the Altmans, but even she can’t lie to herself. The pure and unvarnished truth—no omissions, no technicalities, just blinding honesty—is that Alice ruined everything she could have had with Van. Not out of some misplaced sense of nobility, the self-sacrifice of saying,I can’t getbetween you and your mother.No. It was pure selfishness. Alice’s desire to protect herself, and only herself, rearing up and smashing all the other options to dust.
And yes, maybe Babs would have freaked out about Alice flitting from her son to her daughter. Maybe they’d have needed to spend time with Marie separately while things with Babs were bad—and that would be horrible.
But Babs and Nolan aren’t the reason Alice is alone and miserable in her cold, Knope-less studio tonight. What it comes down to is that if she weren’t such an ableist asshole that she refuses to watch Van wither away and die, then she could be tucked up in bed next to her right now, warming her freezing toes on Van’s shins, scrolling through Marie’s social media together, a strong arm under her head, her chest pressed against Van’s.
Alice misses all of them horribly, but she can’t think about them—Van, Babs, Nolan, Aunt Sheila—without hating herself. Without being disgusted by what a terrible person she is. But with Marie, it’s different. She can miss Marie without feeling like a manipulative asshole, because whether she was with Nolan or Van, or neither, she loved Marie like a little sister. The cookies, the costume closet, laughing at Aunt Sheila together…it’s exactly what Alice would have wanted from a sister if she’d ever had one. Marie was never filling in for anyone, not standing in for Alice’s dead parents or absent aunt or missing cousin or comatose fake-boyfriend. She was the only little sister Alice has ever had, and Alice misses her so fucking badly.
She wants a future where she can drive down to Corvallis to see Marie in some weird experimental play. She wants to help her move out of her dorm and into an apartment with her friends over the summer. She wants to text her memes, to hearabout Marie’s crushes and classes and roommate drama. She wants to be the cool big sister who buys her hair dye or takes her to pierce her eyebrow or get her first tattoo even though Babs will flip.
But Alice can’t have any of that. She can’t be Marie’s big sister anymore, and she lets herself cry about it.
By ten, Alice is all cried out. She doesn’t feel lighter, though. She feels heavy, like she’s a soggy piece of bread. She should get out of bed, brush her teeth, turn off the lights. She should put down her phone.
But she doesn’t.
And then, while she’s robotically refreshing Marie’s page, a new post appears.
And, fuck.
She should have stopped. She should have gone to sleep. She should have blocked Marie. She should never have come to this page, to have tortured herself like this, because she’s pretty sure there would never have been a good time to see this post, but right now is definitely not it. Not after a terrible day, after hours of misery and hating herself. Now isn’t the time to process this, but it’s too late.
She’s already seen it.
It’s a video of Van working with Nolan, helping him use those enormous stretchy bands to improve his balance. “My sister is the best physical therapist in Portland,” Marie’s voice says over the footage, the captions big and bold across the bottom. “She’s opening her own practice and she needs an office manager. Link to the job posting in the comments. You could not possibly have a better boss! Click it!!!”
Alice almost throws up her tasteless, salty soup.
It’s not like Alice thought she could still have the job, not after everything. Not after Christmas Eve, not after Vancouldn’t even look at her at the park. She hadn’t thought about the job much, that loss minuscule compared to the rest. But…shit.
She still wants it. She still wants Van, still wants out of her boring job, to get away from Nolan and all of the finance bros and lawyers who don’t think she exists. She doesn’t want to spend every day staring at the spot on the floor where all this started, where Nolan’s legs gave out and his head hit the black marble floor with a sickening thud.
She still wants the life she almost had, the life that was never actually a possibility. A life where she goes to work at Van’s practice, where she’s busy and helpful and happy, and then goes home to Van, who is strong and healthy and okay, and they have mind-blowing sex before getting the best sleep of their lives, on repeat, ad infinitum.
That was never real, but the job was. The job was real, and it was Alice’s, and now it’s gone. It’s not the worst thing she’s seen tonight, not the worst thing that’s happened today, but it’s the last straw. She wants the job less than she wants Van, but she’s still not sure she’ll ever fully get over it.
She throws her phone across the bed, and sobs into her pillow until she falls asleep a long, long time later.
Twenty-Three
It’s been three weeks since Christmas and four days since Alice’s no good, very bad day, and she’s alone in Isabella’s house. It was too expensive to fly four people to Texas over Christmas, so Isabella’s family is making the trek out to see the grandparents this week instead. Alice wonders why her aunt and uncle didn’t simply come to Portland themselves—two adults flying would be both cheaper and easier than flying with a preschooler and a toddler—but, whatever. Since when has Alice agreed with any decision her aunt has made in the past twenty or so years?
Isabella had asked Alice if she would be willing to house-sit for them. She’d claimed that Henry was always anxious about leaving their house empty for more than a night or two. Alice was pretty sure it was simply kindness—would Alice like to stay in a big house with an actual TV and full-sized kitchen instead of her cramped, loud, probably moldy apartment?
Yes, in fact, Alice would.
Or, well, she’d thought she would. But now that she’s here, it’s painfully quiet. Alice hadn’t realized how much the sounds of her neighbors keep her company. How the loud Russian soap operas in 301 drown out the silence of her own life, how the baby crying in 203 reminds her of how happy she is to not have her own children. It never feels like she’s entirely alone in her apartment, because she never is. There’s always someone pulling up to buy weed from the dealer in 302, someone moving in or out, the endless parade of one-night stands from the girls who live in 304.
Up here in North Portland, on this quiet street of large, single-family homes, Alice can’t hide from her loneliness. She has so many rooms she can be alone in. A kitchen to cook in by herself, a dining room to silently eat in like a sad widow in Victorian England, a living room for solitary sitting, a den for solo TV watching. Even a finished basement, in case she wants to watch sports alone in a man cave or build something truly enormous out of Legos. Then upstairs, she can be alone in the bed that Isabella and Henry share because they’re fucking married and pledged to never be alone again, or in Sebastian’s or Hazel’s room, where they’re only one loud wail away from having company at any time of day or night.
Alice feels like the walls are closing in around her. She texts with Delilah a little on Saturday, setting up a time to go shopping with her and Raisin in a couple weeks, but Delilah stops responding after a while and Alice isn’t desperate enough to endure the shame of double texting. Isabella’s busy with her parents—who Alice is quite sure she’ll never forgive for abandoning her and her dad—so Alice is well and truly alone. On Sunday afternoon, Alice briefly considers chopping off her own finger to have a reason to scream, to fill the house with noiseand the bustle of paramedics. But an ambulance ride would literally bankrupt her, so she decides to put on her coat and boots and go for a walk instead.
She doesn’t want to go back to the same park in case Van is there again, so she heads for a different one that her phone tells her is about half an hour’s walk away, which seems far enough to make her feel accomplished, while close enough that she probably won’t die of frostbite.
It’s cold outside, windy and bracing, but she ducks her head down into her collar, one of Henry’s beanies on her head and Isabella’s warmest gloves on her hands. The beanie saysAsk Me about Shrooms!on it, so she’s wearing it inside out. She does not, in fact, want to be asked about mushrooms of the magical or culinary variety. She’s sure she wouldn’t be able to do Henry proud.
It’s a straight shot down Isabella’s street to the park and the neighborhood is so cute that she almost hates it. It’s nothing like where she lives, no businesses or dumpsters or billboards or trash. It’s just cute house after cute house, big wet lawns and bare trees. There’s a Prius or Subaru in every driveway, and she can hear kids playing in several of the backyards. Some have smoke curling out of their chimneys, which makes Alice want to have a childhood-style panic attack but she knows is probably nice for people without fire-related trauma.
She finally makes it to the park and begins to walk across it, grimacing in the sharp cold. The park isn’t too big, only a couple square blocks, and something about the misery is kind of working for her. It’s nice to feel like shit for a good reason—she’s exhausted, her toes have turned to ice in her cheap boots, the skin of her cheeks feels like it’s filleting off her face in the wind—instead of because she has irrevocably fucked up her life. It’s a good change of pace.
