After Alice

Chapter 41: Reawakening

When Liv woke up late the next morning, her unsettled stomach reminded her why she was staying home from school that day. She went downstairs and found a note from Mims on the table telling her to take it easy. She would check in on Liv at her lunch break.

Despite still not feeling well, Liv was ravenous, and ate two bowls of cereal, plus toast. Her mood lifted after that, and she took a shower and felt somewhat normal for the first time in days. While in the shower, she thought about her essay. How could she write about her mother without her panic attacks being triggered? The trick would be to give herself some distance from the subject, she thought. Then another idea occurred to her: What if I write a letter to my grandmother, telling her all I know about Mary Ellen Rigley's life? Alice had died never receiving a reply to her letters. Even though it was decades too late, it would give Liv a focus; someone to talk to who had really wanted to know. She would just stick to the facts and leave out any parts that were too upsetting to her.

As soon as she dried off from her shower, Liv sat at her desk to write. The words came quickly. She began by explaining how Mary Ellen grew up in Troy, New York, where her family had a shoe business. Then she graduated from high school with honors, and went to SUNY New Paltz, followed by earning a master's degree in linguistics from Duke University. Eventually, Mary Ellen married a professor there. She was interested in the civil rights movement and gave money to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The next parts were harder to write as Liv approached the story of the Dynastic Order Sect. She tried to remember what Ted Gordon had said about his ex-wife: Mary Ellen had been an idealistic woman. She was searching for peace, truth, and acceptance. As she wrote, Liv felt, for the first time, a sense of kinship with her birth mother. Her mind wandered to her own quest for truth. Hadn't this entire project been spurred by Liv's desire to connect with family?

Maybe this was how Mary Ellen Rigley felt too, Liv thought. Abandoned as a baby by her mother Alice, and sensing that her father wasn't really her blood, she might have been looking for a new family when she met Vanderboss and his Dynastic Order Sect.

Liv kept writing. She described Vanderboss, the Redeemer, who had appeared to be a good person at first, but then turned into a controlling asshole. Who did this remind Liv of? Her heart raced and her stomach heaved.

Mr. C had been so encouraging to her at first. He had helped her access information about Mary Ellen Rigley Liv could have never gotten on her own. But then, after her discovery that Mary Ellen was her birth mother, everything in her world had changed. Mr. C had seemed sympathetic, but he didn't really acknowledge her pain. Liv was still confused about how they had become lovers. She almost felt like it was just a dream. Meanwhile, she felt stifled by the secrecy around their relationship. She had so many questions and no one she could talk to.

Liv ran to the bathroom to throw up. She felt cursed by something that seemed to reach back to her mother and her grandmother. Hadn't they all been betrayed by men? Her vision blackened and panic surged through her body. She slumped to the floor of the bathroom and lay there in a fetal position for a long time.

The phone rang and rang. Liv heard the answering machine pick up and Mims's concerned voice came through. "Hi, Honey. Just calling to see how you are doing. Maybe you're sleeping. I am going to get out early from work to check on you. I'll see you in an hour. Bye."

Liv peeled herself off the bathroom floor and crawled into her bed. Her head pounded with pain, her stomach ached, and she felt a lump behind her ear where she had hit the tiles. Her computer screensaver showed pipes tunneling through the darkness, like the crevices of her mutilated brain. She wanted a drink so badly; it compelled her to get up out of bed and limp down to the basement to check Ricky's mini fridge. Luckily, one Pabst Blue Ribbon was still in there. She cracked it open and took a long sip. The bitter fizz felt like a balm on her pain points. She finished the can in three more draughts and tossed it in the trash bin by the dryer.

When Mims came home at 2:30, Liv was back in bed.

"How are you feeling?"

Liv rolled over and stared at her wall.

"I think you need to see the doctor. Maybe you have a bad case of food poisoning."

"No!"

"Well, if you can't keep anything down, you could get dehydrated."

Liv grunted incoherently.

"If this keeps up tomorrow, we're going in."

"I'll be fine."

"We'll see." Mims turned to leave, but then stopped and said, "I'm going to do some laundry. Do you have anything you want me to wash?"

"No," Liv said, and pulled the covers over her head. She heard Mims shut the door softly behind her.