She sighed. She knew her mother got scared when she thought Alice might be sad, and so Julia was always trying to shove her daughter toward happiness. Alice had taught herself to smile when she walked into rooms her mother was in. She knew that smiling would relax Julia immediately. But this was tiring work, and Alice said, her voice closer to tears than she would have liked, “I’ll do my best, okay, Mom?”
The electricity in Julia petered out, and she nodded. They were both quiet for the rest of the ride. When they reached Boston University’s campus, her mother helped her carry her things up to the second-floor dorm room. They had arrived before Alice’s roommate—a girl named Gloria from Louisiana—so Alice chose the bottom bunk and the desk closest to the window. Alice let her mother hug her goodbye, but she couldn’t hug back, because she thought that if she did, something inside her might break and she would cry. Alice never cried—another loss of control she shied away from—and she couldn’t afford to start now.
* * *
—
She found the first month of college stressful. She’d worried that the lack of solitude would bother her, and it did. She liked her roommate, who had a wonderful, belting laugh, but Gloria spoke only in terms of gossip—“Did you see the guy with the baseball hat flirting with that blond girl?” or “Those two clearly hate each other’s guts.” Alice nodded in vague agreement, but it seemed too early for gossip, like going on vacation and buying a house on the first day. She thought, But we don’t know any of these people. I don’t know you. We’re all strangers.
Because of her height, she was unable to blend in to the scenery. She crisscrossed the campus on her way to class and felt people staring. Girls looked shocked when they saw her but rarely said anything. Some would adopt a pitying expression, the embodiment of the words you poor thing. She knew they were whispering prayers of gratitude for their own smallness, for the fact that they were feminine and could hide themselves when necessary. The boys asked her if she was on the basketball or the volleyball team. When she said neither, they were shocked. “Is your dad Larry Bird?” one guy asked her. She thought he was joking, then realized he wasn’t. Certain boys could accept her height only if she was a serious athlete or, apparently, related to one. Otherwise, her size bothered them, like a piece of mail they couldn’t find a mailbox for. Still, there were other young men—the slightly older versions of the high school boys who’d walked the halls with her—who grinned at the sight of Alice.
“Hell yeah,” a boy named Rhoan said to her when they were introduced at an orientation event. “Right on.” His smile was so infectious she couldn’t help but return it. He and Alice became friends, and when he was stoned one night, he tried to explain his initial reaction to her. “You were this giantess, and you were owning every inch of it. You’re a badass, Alice.”
“I’m not, actually,” Alice said. “People mistake my height for bravery. It’s been happening for a while now.”
Rhoan looked like he was considering this. “Okay,” he said. “Fair enough. Maybe what I’m seeing in you is the potential for you to become a badass.”
Alice smiled. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “But thank you.”
Carrie visited one Saturday afternoon in October, and after walking around Boston University’s vast campus, she, Alice, Rhoan, and Gloria hung out in Alice and Gloria’s room. Their door was open, so they were able to watch students traffic by. Someone down the hall was playing James Taylor, and his melancholic voice twisted through the air.
“I like you,” Gloria said to Carrie at one point. “I’m glad that my girl has a cool friend. Alice is so shy, I was getting worried. I keep trying to set her up with different tall men on campus—she’s a beauty, and she’s getting looks.”
“Oh, please.” Alice rolled her eyes.
“I like you too.” Carrie was cross-legged on the beanbag in the corner, beaming under her pixie haircut. “Alice is a slow bloomer, that’s all. She’s going to get there, but she’s playing the long game.” Carrie gave Alice a warning look: I’m going to be honest. “Now that she’s away from her mother, I’m hoping she’ll start living more.”
“Hey,” Alice said, surprised.
“So that’s the issue?” Gloria said. “I’ve known my fair share of controlling mothers, that’s for sure. You poor chickadee.”
“Alice is doing great,” Rhoan said. He was encouraging by nature; he attended college track events just to cheer on the slowest runners. “You and I can look for men together,” he said to her. “Or I can look, and you can keep me company. You do you, baby.”
Part of Alice warmed at Rhoan’s kindness and the attention of these friends, new and old. Another part of her, though, was uncomfortable. This afternoon was exactly what she’d been afraid college would be like. Too much unscheduled time, too many hours at loose ends with your peers, inventing dramas out of perfectly fine lives. “To be clear,” she said, “how I live has nothing to do with my mother. I love her.”
Carrie met Alice’s blue eyes with her own. “I didn’t say anything about you not loving her.”
Alice frowned, to signal that she was done talking about this. Carrie knew that Alice was touchy when it came to her mother, so Carrie usually kept her thoughts to herself. But Carrie had told her friend once, during high school, not to model herself on Julia. “I like your mom a lot,” Carrie had said, “but anyone that dresses and does their hair as carefully as your mom does every single day is unhappy on the inside. She’s trying to hide all her messiness, and I want better than that for you.”
* * *
—
One Tuesday afternoon in the middle of February, Alice returned to her room after a class and found her mother there. Julia was standing by Alice’s desk. She was wearing a suit, and her hair was in a fancy layered bun.
Alice stopped in the doorway. Her mother hadn’t been back to campus since dropping her daughter off at the beginning of the school year—Alice had traveled home for long weekends and holidays—and Julia never showed up anywhere unannounced or unplanned. “Mom?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Julia didn’t look at her daughter. She leaned closer to the wall. “These images,” she said, in a tight voice. “Where are they from?”
Alice felt something sink inside her. She walked into the room, shut the door, and slid off her winter coat. The wall above her desk was covered with photographs of Cecelia Padavano’s murals. Rhoan was an aspiring art archivist, and he’d helped Alice collect the images from various art magazines. They’d had to send away for a few of them, mailing a check for a couple of dollars to pay for an obscure Chicago art journal that seemed to cover most of Cecelia’s work. Rhoan had blown up some of the smaller images with equipment they had in the art department. It was an ongoing project; Alice was currently waiting on the arrival of a magazine that featured a mural Cecelia had painted for a city school.
“They’re your sister’s,” Alice said. She hadn’t raised the topic of Julia’s family in years. While Alice was in high school, both she and her mother had behaved as if they had no other relatives. Alice visited Rose in Florida but upon her return barely mentioned the trip to her mother. Julia had shut that door between them so many times that Alice had locked it.