Alice blinked and waited for Debbie to speak.
“I think it’s happening,” Debbie said, her face pale, her mouth open like a bottom-feeding fish. Alice thought that Debbie looked awful, and she recoiled, the way she occasionally had when her mother still lived at home and Alice witnessed some adult thing—Serena plucking a stray hair from her chin with the same tweezers that Leonard used to take out splinters. Whatever was happening on Debbie’s face went beyond the mask of everyday life. It was private, and it was real.
“What time is it?” Alice asked. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the dark.
“It’s three in the morning,” Debbie said. “Gather yourself, and then come in.” She squeezed Alice’s shoulder, hard, and then turned back toward the bedroom.
Alice swung her legs onto the floor and sat up. She could see the clock above the kitchen table—it was 3:05 a.m. She could leave now, right now—she could walk out the front door and be sixteen again, and see her father eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. She could watch Ursula curl her body around her father’s strong neck. She could make him laugh, and tease him, and she could feel all of his love pointing right at her like the headlights of a car.
* * *
? ? ?
She couldn’t save him—Alice knew that. Leonard didn’t even like that kind of science fiction, the books with medical advancements that could sustain people for centuries, the books with brains in jars, the books with immortal vampires or power-hungry magicians. He thought that easy resolutions were utterly lacking in verisimilitude, despite the fact that he’d written two books about time-traveling teenagers. He and Serena could have stayed married, he could have gotten a real job, he could have worn things that didn’t come from L.L.Bean, but he didn’t. Leonard didn’t mind doing things his own way. He had always been exactly who he was, better or worse, take it or leave it. And Alice couldn’t leave him, not now. She hoped it was true, what he’d said about love, about all of that love still existing in the world. He wasn’t religious, and so neither was she. Fiction, maybe, or art—were those religions? Believing that the stories you told could save you, and could reach everyone you had ever loved?
* * *
? ? ?
Alice pushed herself up to stand and walked into Leonard’s bedroom, her own headlights lighting the way.
64
Alice hardly noticed the subway ride home. It seemed quicker than usual, and she looked up right as the doors were closing at Borough Hall, hurrying off before she missed her stop. The walk from the station was long, fifteen minutes on a good day, but Alice didn’t mind. She just put one foot in front of the other until she was standing in front of her building.
* * *
? ? ?
Mary had known what to do. She and Debbie had worked everything out in advance—whom to call and in what order: the funeral parlor, the credit card companies, the friends. There was already an obituary ready to go. Leonard’s photo would be in all the newspapers, on Twitter. It’d be in the black-and-white photo montage at the Oscars, with someone singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a ball gown. Alice made some of the calls to friends—she and Debbie split up the list. No one was surprised. Everyone was kind. Alice cried during the first few, nearly unable to get the words out, but then she got used to the rhythm of the conversation and found that she was able to make it through. That lasted a few minutes and then she was crying again. Alice hugged Mary longer than she’d ever hugged a relative stranger in her life. This was how people felt about their midwives, or platoon mates, or fellow hostages—they had seen things together that no one else would ever fully understand.
* * *
? ? ?
Alice found her apartment key and put it in her lock but couldn’t make it fit. Her phone buzzed—Sam—and Alice picked up, even though she found that she couldn’t actually speak. “Oh, honey,” Sam said, over and over again. “Oh, honey.” Sam was a good mom, and a good friend. “I’ll come over. Bring some food.”
“Okay,” Alice said, and hung up. She went back to trying to unlock the door but couldn’t open it, and then threw her keys onto the sidewalk. “Fuck!”
Slowly, the door she’d been trying to unlock swung open. “Um, Alice?”
It was Emily.
“Oh, hi. Sorry for the noise. I was having some trouble with my key.” Alice felt herself begin to blubber. “Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Emily said. “I’m working from home today anyway. Oh, wait, I have a package for you, hang on.” She opened the door wide, propping it open with a doorstop. Alice took the two steps down and looked inside, into her apartment. Gone was her bed; gone was her table. Gone was her mess and her clothes and her art on the walls. All of it was replaced with Emily’s glittery taste—a pink couch, a rug in the shape of a rainbow, a four-poster bed. Alice could see straight through to the garden, as if the apartment had doubled in size, like it was sitting in front of a mirror. Emily came back with a small box. “Here you go.”