stains

Alice

"Todd, would you come here, please?" Alice called out from the kitchen. Her hands were wrapped in yarn with one knitting needle haphazardly stuck through the middle. "TODD!" She shouted, much louder this time. He was never where she needed him to be. There was a loud scraping sound of the heavy wooden chair Todd kept in his study as he pushed himself back from his desk, and she sighed. She knew why he was up there, holed up in his office all day while she was home, stuck downstairs in the kitchen or the living room watching the same soap operas unfold on daytime television. She never called for him unless it was to reach for something or other, like her knitting scissors. Because Alice knew Todd was hiding from her. He just couldn't look at her the same why since she started using the Depends.

Todd rose slowly and made his way to the door of his office, each footstep a thumping reminder of every step Alice could not take, and closed it with a smart click.

As Alice heard the door shut, the pitter patter of the wet drip from her tears landing on her lap filled her ears. She raised her hands to her face, and as the tears streamed faster, slowly began to pull the threads of yarn apart with her teeth.

A car pulled up to the house out front. The whrrr of the engine sputtering to a stop as one, then two car doors slammed and the air filled with the sound of teenage girls.

She listened to the voices from the yard drift in through the half open window, and she lowered her hands, and leaned forward in her chair, straining to hear better:

"...-for a bike ride with dad."

"You're always at the park with your freakin' dad, Chris. Weird. Call me when you're home."

"Won't be home til late."

"Whatever, see ya tomorrow!"

It was her daughter, Christine, being dropped off by Ellen. Home from school before her brothers as usual, since she had nothing to do, the lazy girl. Alex, Andy, Chris and Tommy would still be at the baseball field, Alice imagined. With one or more of those slutty freshmen girls from the high school, popping their gum and twisting their hair around dainty fingers, wet lips covered in gloss. Christine wasn't friends with any of those girls. Christine didn't have any friends at all, really, except for Ellen. Ellen was Christine's one and only confidant, and Alice always thought it a little sad that Ellen hung around at all. It was sympathy, you see. Ellen's mom, Tina had been very close friends with Alice when they were girls and now she forced her daughter to befriend Alice's daughter. Some kind of Midwesterner's logic about friendships being by proxy and not by choice.

Instead, Christine was home hanging out around the house all summer and after school with her too tight jeans and her belly pooch. She needed those bike rides - that was for sure. But she did spend an awful lot of her free time with Todd. More than the boys did, and he coached their soccer season. Todd loved coaching the boys. Said that he wished Christine would have joined the girl's team but she just wasn't interested. The only things that interested Christine were Bon Bons and bike rides.

The thing was, Alice didn't like her own daughter very much. There had been a resentment brewing deep inside of her from the day she found out she was pregnant with Christine. "Girls steal your beauty," her mother had told her. Alice herself was the last girl in a gaggle of 6 children, all brothers before her. "You'll never be loved like your daughter." It had seemed a strange thing to say to a daughter about to bear another into the world, but when Alice saw Christine's face in the hospital room for the first time on that wet and windy April afternoon, it was a whisper of more than rain she heard. Her sons were corralled in, their father happily crowding all four of them at once into the small labor and delivery room. They clamored over each other for a look at their brand new, pink baby sister. But Alice did not smile. She felt tired and dizzy from the IV in her arm. She saw Todd's face melt as he grabbed his daughter from Alice's hands. A look she had not seen cross his typically furrowed brow since before they married five years prior. Alice felt her guts drop a bit as Todd caressed her small face and held her to his cheek, murmuring to her while Alice laid back on the bed, fading into nothingness.

For the first few years of Christine's life, she was the same as the boys. Alice recovered alright from her fifth and final pregnancy, and for a time, Todd treated them all the same. With green bow ties for the boys at Christmas and a red checkered dress for Christine, their parents stood over them the perfect picture of domestic and suburban bliss. When the boys began middle school, Todd happily signed up to host Boy Scout nights at the church and eventually signed on as a full time scout leader. That prompted him to get involved with the other after school activities programs and eventually, was how he became the boys soccer coach, too.

When Christine turned 14, everything changed. It all happened over one weekend in June. The whole family was planning to take a camping trip at Lake Reign for the weekend, but Todd wasn't looking forward to any of it. It had been a rough few months between he and Alice and the thought of being stuck at a remote campsite with her all weekend was not thrilling him, and Alice could tell. She had been feeling exceedingly weak the last few weeks. Todd had needed to help her to and from the kitchen to cook dinner, and she hadn't even been able to make it up the stairs to bed the past few nights. Lo and behold, the afternoon they were due to set out, Alice could tell that her body wasn't feeling up to the trip. At the every last moment, she decided to send Todd with the kids alone. She worried that he might cancel the entire trip, but to her surprise, he seemed to perk up. As he happily slung rucksacks into the trunk, the boys began piling into the back seat. Christine stood outside of the van, looking at her mother.

"I think it's time for us to head out, kids." Todd exclaimed, suddenly jubilant. "Hope on in front, Chrissy."

It was the way he looked at her, or more, looked through her. Christine seemed to shiver and grit her teeth, as she grabbed the door handle of the passenger side door. Alice felt the floor drop out of her belly, as if she were on a roller coaster that had just crested the top of the first big hill.

"You should leave Christine. Just take her bike off the rack. She'll have plenty to do at home with me. That way you and the boys can fish and hike and have a good time." Alice told her husband. She didn't know why she said it. The feeling of wanting, needing, Christine to stay close to her was new and unusual. It surprised even Alice herself when the words spilled out, but there they were, hanging out in the open like on a clothes line. Wafting between them. It left a little chill.

Todd turned to her with a crestfallen face. "Why can't she come?" He had nearly pleaded. "She doesn't have to hike or fish with us, but she'll have a good time, Al. You'll have a great time, won't you Christine?"

He hadn't called her Al in a long time. It made her smile. She shook the feeling of (dare she say it?) dread that had momentarily filled her at the through of her daughter taking off for a weekend with the boys. Alice relented that Christine might not ruin the trip after all, and her bike stayed attached to the van. Alice waved goodbye from the porch, telling everyone to have a good time, and she'd see them on Sunday afternoon when they returned. She could see the boys shoving each other through the back window, a fist went flying and connected with a shoulder. It was all t shirts and arms flailing as they pulled out of the driveway. As Alice turned one last time to wave goodbye, she saw Todd's arms casually drape across the passenger seat, his arm around Christine. 

And the chill returned.