“Speaking of what you’d like to be,” Helen said, “have you found a job yet?”
“No, but that’s what I’m doing. Looking for a job.”
“I know the economy isn’t as flush as it was, but you sure are having a hard time of it.”
“Yes, I am,” Alice agreed.
She had no intention of finding a job, and had not been looking for one on this hot Saturday. A few weeks back, she had made inquiries at the county’s social services department, which had a job placement program. But she didn’t hear what she wanted to hear, so she left. Alice was, however, following Sharon ’s advice. She walked up to six, seven miles a day, yet she didn’t appear to be losing any weight. She walked morning and night, usually west, until her feet were sore and cracked at the heels. She walked along Frederick Road and ended up at the community college, where she took home course information for the fall semester. She detoured through the pretty old neighborhoods along Frederick Road -Ten Hills, North Bend, Catonsville -and made up stories about the families she saw in the old Victorian houses, with their big porches and cupolas.
Today, she had walked to Westview Mall, drawn by the memory of the G. C. Murphy’s. Alice had loved the old dime store, with its smells of fresh-popped popcorn and wooden floors. She used to buy chocolate-covered peanuts there, and she had never found ones that tasted quite the same, even as her mother brought her Brach’s and Russell Stover’s, Fannie Farmer and See’s on visiting days at Middlebrook. Exasperated, Helen finally told Alice that her memory was playing tricks on her, but Alice trusted her mouth’s insistent recall. G. C. Murphy was long gone, but she had a theory that the dollar store that had taken its place might be the best place to find a similar treat, that the flavor had been captured in the walls, in the floorboards.
She had not headed out with the plan of seeing Ronnie. But she couldn’t forget Helen’s mention of Ronnie’s job, at the bagel place over by Westview. The Ronnie she had known had no talent for routine. The most basic requirements at school-bringing permission slips, milk money-had defeated her. She wondered what Ronnie looked like, how she had changed, if at all. If she saw Ronnie, she might understand what people felt when they looked at Alice. Her mother and Sharon had seen her pretty regularly over the past seven years, so it wasn’t as if they had to adjust to a whole new Alice when she came home. But they acted as if they had, as if they expected a little girl, and didn’t know what to do with this heavyset eighteen-year-old who looked so much older than she was. It wasn’t Alice ’s shape that made her look old so much as the way she moved, dragging her feet as if her legs were swollen. Store clerks called her “ma’am,” and she probably could have gotten served in a bar if she were so inclined. She wasn’t. But seeing Ronnie-yes, seeing Ronnie had a definite allure.
She wasn’t sure what feelings might surge up if she saw Ronnie again. Hatred, of course. Time had dulled that emotion somewhat-Alice’s stomach no longer twisted at the mere thought of Ronnie, and the girl was largely gone from her dreams-but hatred was still there, along with the desire to see her punished, really and truly.
Once, just once, Sharon had come close to saying what Alice needed to hear, but she had said it in the odd roundabout way she used with Alice. This was just a few years ago, when Alice was forced to go back to the chaos of Middlebrook after a year in a smaller, much more pleasant juvenile home. She was upset about leaving the old stone building where she thought she would get to stay until she was eighteen, and in her hurt she had lashed out at Sharon. Why had the law treated Alice and Ronnie as if they were the same kind of girl, guilty of the same things, when everyone should know they were not?
“Well, imagine Ronnie was someone who went swimming and got a cramp,” Sharon began.
“In her stomach or her leg?” Alice asked.
The question seemed to catch Sharon off guard, although it seemed reasonable to Alice. It would make a big difference, where the cramp was. “In her stomach, I guess. And she begins to drown, and you’re swimming nearby, so you go over and try to help her. But sometimes drowning people get panicky and they grab the people who are trying to save them and drag them down, and they both end up drowning.”
“Does it happen a lot?”
“Um, no. Because lifeguards are trained to handle panicky swimmers. I was a Water Safety Instructor.” Alice was used to Sharon ’s tendency to bring every subject back to herself, so she barely noticed this stray bit of information. Besides, Water Safety Instructor didn’t sound very cool, not like being a lifeguard, on a high chair with a white-creamed nose. “But if you’re just another swimmer passing by, you might not know what to do when someone grabs you.”
Alice thought about this. It still sounded as if it was her fault, then.
“If you’re not a lifeguard and the person grabs you, are you allowed to push them off you? Is it okay to leave them to drown?”
The question left Sharon uncharacteristically silent. She placed her hand on her left cheek, rubbing her spots. Alice had noticed that Sharon reached for that part of her face whenever they came close to discussing how unfair everything was. Perhaps it was unfair that Sharon Kerpelman, a not unpretty woman, had been born with those spots on her face. But that was nothing compared to Alice ’s life. Besides, Sharon ’s story made Ronnie sound almost normal, doing what anyone might do, in order to survive.
Alice could have told Sharon the story of how Helen had taken her and Ronnie out to the Baskin-Robbins on Route 40 one summer night and bought them both double-scoop cones. This would have been the summer between third and fourth grade, when Ronnie had attached herself to the Mannings like a stray cat they had made the mistake of feeding. Helen didn’t seem to mind that she was always around, but Alice did. After all, she was the one who would have to distance herself from Ronnie when school began again in the fall, peeling her off like a piece of gum on her shoe.
At the Baskin-Robbins, Alice had gotten vanilla and chocolate, despite Helen’s urging to be more original, while Ronnie had opted for chocolate chip and orange sherbet, a truly gross combination that she copied from Helen. Only Ronnie’s top scoop, the chocolate chip, rolled to the floor with her first lick.
“Oh, baby,” Helen began. But before anyone could say anything else, Ronnie turned around and knocked Alice ’s cone to the floor. “Don’t laugh at me,” she had shrieked at Alice, who had not made a sound. She had smiled, perhaps just a little bit. But Ronnie’s back was to her, so how could she know that? Helen had wheedled the counterman into giving both girls new cones, but the evening’s happy promise was gone. A second cone simply made Alice aware of losing the first one, which meant this one could be lost, too. She ate her ice cream with such tiny, cautious licks that more melted down her arm than ended up in her mouth.
All these memories had crowded into Alice ’s head as she sat on a curb with her just-purchased bag of chocolate-covered peanuts, studying the Bagel Barn. The restaurant sat off by itself on the edge of the parking lot, not quite part of the mall, not completely on its own. The Bagel Barn had been many things, even in Alice ’s short memory of what she thought of as the before time. It had been a White Castle, a Fotomat, then a taco stand. At some point, while she was gone, it had been expanded from its original little hut shape, so it now had a seating area, and the roof had been painted red. But it didn’t have a lot of customers, and Alice bet it would be something else within a year or two. That was the kind of place that would hire Ronnie Fuller, a place on its way down.