After Alice Fell: A Novel by Kim Taylor Blakemore

Author:Kim Taylor Blakemore [Taylor Blakemore, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2021-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The Phoenix Hotel lobby is cool. No one pays attention to me. The bench I sit on is curved, tufted with green velvet much used and sheened. The desk clerk has pulled over a small table, has gone to the trouble of bringing me a spritzer of soda water, and I nod at him and take a sip. The spritzer is flat. I pretend it isn’t. I pretend instead I am just a woman sitting in a hotel lobby because the weather threatens rain and thunderstorms. I am the widow people give wide berth or too much sympathy. I watch the comings and goings of the people up the stairs, boots and button-up shoes, carpetbags and leather carrying cases. The bell ringing for the bellhop. The room keys jangled and delivered. Comings and goings.

I’ve set the package on the table. The twine is knotted twice. It won’t unknot, so I pull the string to the edge and shrug it off to the seat. A book. Thin, the cover a cheap, blue cotton. The pages crinkle along their edges, as if left in the rain.

Open the book. The words won’t bite.

I flip quickly. There’s no rhyme or reason to the lines of words and the spattering of sketches. Nothing dated. Alice’s handwriting is precise, as it always is—she worked hard at it all those years ago when I taught her. Nothing misspelled, and she was proud of that, studied the word lists I gave her from my old textbooks. My learning of sums and the French Revolution, embroidery and beginning French, passed on to her in the corner of her room we’d turned into a study.

She’s come again. I can’t look at her teeth. They’re big as the windows. Marion would call her Mary Mule.

“Oh, Alice.” I run my thumb along the paper and the indent of the pencil marks.

Kitty’s eyes are green glass. Sometimes I want to shatter them. On and on there’s always hope. When?

A sketch, then, in pencil. A view of the trees from the women’s porch. I recognize the smokestack poking above the leaves. She’s drawn in creatures hanging and grinning from branches. Knob kneed. Long nailed. Some with hair aflame.

Today ice. Toes still numb. Lemon cake.

Another sketch: A widow with a veil so long it pools at her feet. She holds a single lily and stands over a grave small enough for a babe.

A page torn out. The ragged edges traced with curlicues. It is Kitty in profile, clear cheeked and smiling. She is almost pretty, and somehow Alice has caught the light from the window.

I will be a good girl.

Box. Mrs. B said not so long this time, but she was wrong. 1,786 seconds. I counted. Sent complaint to Dr. M.

My breath stops at the image on the next page: A girl on a chair, thick leathers. Ankles to chair legs, wrists to the arms. Chest belted tight. Head trapped inside a square box, a lock on the side. A cat lying on top with its paws slung over the edge and its eyes staring direct into mine.

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