Alice At Heart (5 page)

Lilith shut her eyes, filled with pity and regret. She had been to Riley once before.

Young, then, dark-haired and somber,
Lilith had stood at Joan Riley’s grave in the cemetery of a Riley church. Autumn leaves danced across the raw rectangle of red mountain clay. A plain granite marker read simply,
Joan, 1950-1968
. The Rileys had not bothered to list Joan’s stillborn baby, though Lilith had understood the baby’s body lay with its mother’s. Lilith shut her eyes.
My half-sister
.

Gold and red mountains looked down like silent guards, making Lilith draw up straighter in response, even as despair weighed her into silence. She touched Joan Riley’s engraved name.
My dear
, she began, then stopped. There were no words for this tragedy, no song for it.

There was no answer but the unforgiving wind.

Lilith had bowed her head in thought as she walked back to the cemetery’s gravel drive.
I should have come here sooner. I could have taken care of her and her child. I should have known there was a child.

The churchyard lay on a knoll overlooking the town of Riley. Pulling a soft cashmere wrap around her pale suit, Lilith looked down at the pragmatic mountain town, sunken into forest. In the distance, the woodland parted to outline a pretty lake, where poor Joan had gone after giving birth to a Bonavendier. The only place that would have made sense to an ordinary girl thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

Lilith had felt a calling, the tiniest cry, and had listened with her head up. But, no, it had just been a hawk, screeching in the unfriendly mountain sky. Yet she had stood there a long time, searching, not knowing why. Her music was fading.

We have to move forward
, she had thought, and
listen no more to the past
.

Now, all these years later,
Lilith heard all the songs she’d forgotten so long ago.

Oh, Alice. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen harder. But I promise you, we’ll coax you down to the sea.

Someone was touching me
without using any hands. I felt the odd tingle begin at the back of my skull, like fingers massaging my scalp, but then I realized it was a vibration, humming against my skin, seeping into my brain, calling to me. My heart struggled like a fish trapped in the net of my ribs. I kept my head bent and eyes shut.

An amplified voice boomed over me. “
And we ask that You look down upon Alice Riley with a true and knowing heart, and show us all her grandness of spirit and weakness of flesh.”

The minister of Riley First Baptist—the minister who, as a young man, would have married my mother, was speaking those ambivalent words. He was now an aging small-town preacher with a kindly, dutiful expression. He’d volunteered, when no other minister would, to lead the town in prayer at my award ceremony. His public prayer implied I was neither evil nor saintly but simply a soul in limbo whom no one but God could understand.

It was not precisely the hail-the-good-deed invocation one might hope for when forced to attend a public façade of appreciation. I cringed and sank lower in my metal chair. My stomach roiled. The minister droned on. The humming in my head became so insistent I put my hands to my temples as if in pain. What was happening to me? I feared I was losing my mind and imagined my brain actually shimmying between my ears.

About a hundred determined Riley citizens hunkered around me in similar chairs on the cold brown lawn of the town square. The square’s precise streets were filled with their parked cars and trucks. A freezing wind whipped the limbs of several stalwart sourwoods on the central lawn, and the last of the season’s huge acorns banged like gavels on the roof of the bandstand that served as the ceremony’s stage. Every bang made me jump.

The silent song grew louder inside me.

Sweat gathered between my shoulder blades and breasts, melting me front and back, pooling in the creases where my thighs joined my body, wetting me between the legs and under the armpits. I wore a long wool dress, a quilted blue coat, insulated gloves, and a thick polyester scarf wrapped around my throat—all for discreet public effect only. My cold-natured body was roasting alive, but, more than that, the song was urging me to melt my own skin and emerge in a new form.

Suddenly I sensed a
voice
inside the song. Inside my head. A dulcet female voice, gentle, firm, elegant. Not spoken so much as insinuated.
Meet us at the nearest water, my dear
.

I swayed in my chair. What insanity was this? What delusion?

Stand up, Alice. Strip off your ugly, miserable wrappings and bask in the winter sun. Fling a smile at these ordinary fools as you glide away without a shiver. Leave them sitting here bundled up like gray rabbits in their ignorance. Stand up, Alice. Stand up for yourself
.

I opened my eyes and scrubbed perspiration from my face. I shook.
Leave me alone. Who are you? I refuse to listen. I’m not psychotic. I’m not a fool. You don’t understand. This life is all I have. I can’t ruin it.

You’re wrong, Alice. We’ve found you. We’re here, Alice
.

Where?

Behind you. Turn around and look.

I couldn’t help myself. I began to swivel in my chair. A dozen Rileys, including my mother’s eldest sister, stared at me. I faced forward again. My skin burned. Now I was not only hearing voices, I was replying to them and looking for the owners. Horrified, I riveted my attention to the preacher. He raised his head, shut his Bible, and stepped aside for the mayor. The mayor, a woman with stark brown hair and the methodical manner of a woodchuck gnawing a hard tree branch, began giving a short speech about me. “No matter how Alice saved that beautiful little child,” she said in a toothy voice, “it’s her secret. We know she’ll tell us the real story about her heroic act someday. We know she’s just too shy to tell us yet. We know the truth is as heroic as Alice’s storybook explanation.”

How dare she, Alice? Stand up and tell that pompous little woman your integrity is beyond question.

The mystery voice, again, urging me to rebel against my town, my family, the only home I had in the world.

Please
, I begged.
Stop
.

“Alice, come up here,” the mayor ordered. I couldn’t make myself move at first. Sitting behind me like a watchdog, my mother’s eldest sister clamped a hand on my shoulder and shoved me slightly. I wavered to a stand, locked my trembling knees, then slowly made my way across a mere yard or two of winter lawn, every step requiring total concentration. Beads of moisture slid down my face. On the bandstand’s stage, a stern man in a gray suit and overcoat rose from a chair beside the podium. I made my way up the bandstand’s whitewashed wooden steps as if blind, never raising my eyes to either the people on the stage or the crowd on the lawn.

“Alice,” the mayor chewed into the podium’s microphone, “please welcome the governor’s dear friend.” She named the man’s name, but it didn’t matter. He was a substitute for the little girl’s family, an insincere stranger sent to shield them from my strange self. He rose firmly and began to speak, holding up a plaque bearing my name and the insignia of some obscure foundation I’d never heard of, possibly one that had been made up for the occasion. “The governor and his family are sure of one thing—sure they’re grateful their precious little girl is alive, safe and well. You did the right thing, Ms. Alice Riley. You know in your heart you did the right thing by saving a child’s life, and that’s all that matters.”

How dare he imply your motives remain in question
, the voice whispered.

I gripped my hands together and stared, dazed, as the presenter turned and looked at me. He held out the plaque almost like a challenge. Several reporters posed themselves to snap pictures, and the white-hot light of an Atlanta TV crew suddenly scalded the scene. I blinked hard as I looked up at the presenter. His pity, disgust, and resignation constricted my chest and made me gasp for air. This was my life—eccentric and ugly—this was how people saw me, and suddenly I realized this was how I would always see myself, too, shrinking inch by inch until one day I would simply evaporate.

The singing voice suggested otherwise. Imaginary or not, suddenly I had to look. Sweating, shaking, I turned my head toward the crowd with excruciating care, squinting directly into the TV light, bracing my feet wide apart as my breath shortened to a dizzying pant. A hundred pinched and disapproving faces stared back at me, just like the award presenter, shortening me, melting me, and me letting them. My heart sank. No one was out there but mirrors of those faces.

But then.

But then.

She
stepped into a grassy aisle that divided the rows of chairs. She stepped out of the light, it seemed to me, and walked right up that center aisle with a stride more graceful than a dancer’s, and she stood, tall and beautiful, silver hair piled in some soft, intricate fashion on her head, her body cased in a beautiful light suit not at all right for the place or the weather. Her eyes were the deepest green, lined at the corners with wisdom, utterly hypnotic. I could not breathe. She didn’t lift a hand, say a word, even nod. She sang to me with the silent vibration, the voiceless whisper. And behind her arrived two others, just as amazing, younger, one luxuriously dark-haired, one a flamboyant redhead, their hair upswept, their manner regal, their green-eyed regard so stunning that everyone,
everyone
turned to stare. They wore the finest rich silks, pearl bracelets, diamonds, delicate and elaborate gold pins with handsome gemstones in them. They stood out like angelfish among plain brown trout. Every man in the crowd wanted to touch them. Every woman wanted to be them. I had never seen females so beautiful in my life.

“Alice,” the silver-haired doyenne said aloud, in a voice as lyrical as a southern trade wind. She put more devotion in my name than I’d ever heard before. “
Alice, my dear. We’re your father’s family
.”

Everyone gasped. I took a step back, shaking my head. I felt bewildered, afraid, enthralled; I was half-fainting. What to say, what to do? How did she know me, and what did she know about me? My father’s family? Impossible. His identity was a mystery to me, to my mother’s family.

My mother’s eldest sister leapt to her feet, frowning at the strangers, who ignored her. “Alice,” she called out loudly. “I don’t know what this is about, but take that award and say thank you,
right now
.
Alice
. Get off the stage. If you know what’s good for you, take the award and quit standing there like a fool.”

My gaze sank, defeated, away from the silver-haired woman’s troubled scrutiny. Shame clouded my vision. I looked down, down. At the same time, I slid my shaking hand out to one side, to take the proffered plaque.

Alice, don’t accept so little when you deserve so much
. The stranger’s voice rang in my head again.
Look at our feet, Alice. Recognize your own kind.

I peeked furtively through the bandstand’s railing. All three women had slipped off exquisite shoes, here in the mountains in the middle of winter, on ground so cold particles of ice crunched in the dead grass.
To show me their feet
. Delicate, arching feet. Perfect, strong feet. Sensual feet, outrageous feet. Adorned with jeweled ankle bracelets, the nails gleaming with glossy polishes. The silver-haired one shifted one naked foot just so, arching it like a swan’s head, spreading her toes. The others did the same. I uttered a low, keening sound.

Webbed feet. Like mine.

“Take the damned plaque, Alice,” my mother’s eldest sister warned again.

My head snapped up. I looked at her, then at the presenter, then at the plaque. I jerked my hand away. I staggered down the bandstand’s steps, threw off my coat, and fled, gasping for breath.

In the chaos that ensued, Pearl Bonavendier sighed in dismay. Mara Bonavendier rolled her eyes. “Pathetic,” she couldn’t help saying.

Lilith frowned and signaled for them to follow.

5

Land People fight and struggle and yearn to find magic in their lives. Water People hide behind that magic, but realize the loneliness of it.

—Lilith

I hovered like a ghost, shadowed in the ultraviolet glow of the fish tanks at the Riley Pet Shoppe. I waited for the three web-footed women to find me. I knew, instinctively, that they would.

I smelled the fragrance of their fine perfumes and fabrics as they made their way down the alley behind the shop; I heard the whisper of their fabulous feet on the concrete lane, there; I imagined just the slightest, alluring tang of seasalt in the air around them. My chest heaved. I clutched a countertop for support.

It was a Sunday, and the shop—or
shoppe
, as the owner insisted on calling it—was closed, the lights off, the blinds drawn. The gloaming of the winter afternoon dropped deep shadows over the shelves and cages. Watching me was a menagerie of hamsters, mice, parakeets, snakes, iguana lizards, and hundreds of small fish. Every creature, whether fin, fowl, fur, or reptile, moved to the fronts of their cages and tanks. The parakeets twittered at me; the hamsters made soft, squeaking sounds. The fish merged in neat schools, all facing toward me. I was a magnet for small creatures, beloved by them, trusted. I sang to them every day. They listened.

Silence enveloped me except for the bubbling of the aquariums and the soft callings of my small allies. I waited in that quiet, artificial jungle, jerking my gloves off and dropping them on the floor, tearing my scarf away and losing it somewhere on a shelf, my boyish hair rumpled like an auburn scrub brush, my skin gleaming with sweat, fear, and awe. The sound of my breathing made a low roar in my ears.

Click
. The shop’s back door opened, followed by the softest padding of footsteps beyond the doorway to a storeroom. “Alice,” the silver-haired one called quietly from the storeroom. “Shall we enter?”