three
The note was waiting for her on the kitchen table when she got home from work:
Al-
Don’t sit home all night listening to Joni Mitchell or some other sad girl crap. Don’t get drunk and go looking through those photo albums in the hall closet. And definitely don’t clean the apartment. I’ll be home in time for breakfast tomorrow, and I WILL KNOW if you’ve broken any of these rules.
Love,
Sam
She smiled for a moment, in spite of herself, before going over to the stereo and flipping it on. Joni Mitchell’s voice flooded out into the living room—
The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68, and he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
—as she returned to the kitchen to fix herself a glass of gin. Taking a deep gulp of the stuff, she glanced at the clock over the stove. In just a few minutes, she would turn twenty-three.
The idea of it, of actually being twenty-three years old, felt somewhat preposterous, as if she’d slipped through the cracks somehow and been allowed to live on past her expiration date. Growing up, Alice had always sort of expected that, upon turning twenty-one, she’d embark on some booze-fueled, Fitzgerald-esque bender, and go out in some faux-romantic blaze of glory. But twenty-one had come and gone, and the inspiration to go through with it just hadn’t struck. Of course, she’d been with Catherine then, so maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that she hadn’t been able to work up the requisite spunk.
For a moment, Alice tried to imagine what it would have looked like penciled in in Catherine’s infamous day planner: possible death bender; location tba. She smirked at the thought, taking another swig from her glass. It had occurred to her, in the last week or so, that maybe that’s what the whole thing with Catherine had really been about, some twisted sense of self-preservation. Perhaps somehow she’d subconsciously known that with Catherine she’d be too bored to risk her own life like that, whereas with—
She shook her head quickly. The theory had merit, but she didn’t like to give it too much thought. It bordered too closely on the conclusion that Catherine had saved her life, which at best was a joke, and at worst was too uncomfortable to stomach.
She downed the remaining contents of her glass and headed back into the living room, slumping down on to the couch. The record had started over at some point, and Joni was singing about how she shouldn’t have got on that flight tonight. For her part, Alice was starting to regret telling Sam she didn’t mind spending her birthday without him this year. His mother’s house in the Garden District was less than ten miles away, but it might as well have been a different country, a country from which she was in exile.
It wasn’t Mrs. Cohen’s fault; she’d never done anything to make Alice feel unwelcome. It was just that being back in that neighborhood felt a bit too much like revisiting the scene of a crime she’d rather forget. More than five years had passed, and even a quick drive down St. Charles still managed to open up old wounds, wounds that reeked of shame and disappointment, and just a hint of anger.
Alice felt a warmth spread through her, a delayed reaction to the gin perhaps, and then the phone rang, mercifully breaking her out of her thoughts.
“How’s twenty-three so far?” Sam asked right away.
“Don’t ask.”
“Did your parents call?”
Alice swallowed hard. “Mom did. It was alright. I think she might actually be getting better about everything. I don’t know.” She wasn’t ready to say more about it, so she was relieved when he changed the subject.
“You aren’t sitting in the dark listening to some whiny crap are you?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, switching on a lamp to keep it from being a total lie. Meanwhile, off in the background, Joni was still crooning,
Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine. You taste so bitter and so sweet.
“I wish you would have just come with me,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet.
“No, she sighed. “You needed to do the whole family thing with Uncle Len, and besides-,”
“My mom doesn’t hate you, Al,” he said, eliciting a scoff from her. “Really,” he continued, with a deliberate laugh. “She knows it’s not your fault she’ll never have any grandchildren.”
“Not for a lack of trying on your part, either,” Alice snapped back. It had been meant as a joke, but Sam wasn’t laughing anymore. In the long pause that followed, Alice felt her throat close and her stomach tighten.
“You should just go out tonight without me,” he offered at last.
“I’ll probably just go to bed soon. I guess I was just waiting to see if she might call, you know?” she confessed.
“Ok. No. You’re hanging up with me, getting dressed, and going out. I’ll tell Frank you’re coming. Seriously. Do not sit home with that shit hanging over you on your birthday,” he insisted.
“I’ll think about it,” she lied.
“I mean it, Al,” he said. “Promise me you’ll go out for at least a little while.”
