Alice in Monologue Land by Amy Gettinger

Author:Amy Gettinger [Gettinger, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Raucous Eucalyptus Press
Published: 2015-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 31

That evening, the whole family trooped into the hospital to see Arnold, who was recovering slowly from his ankle surgery. Candace wouldn't let the hospital release him until she had ramps installed in her house. In the hospital gown and paisley ankle cast, with only a laptop and a cell phone to rely on, the beefy, mustached guy looked like a big kid, hopping a bit as an orderly helped him back to bed.

Candace was folding a blanket at the end of the bed. "Hi, Mom. The help around here is so bad, I'm practically living here. Alice, this place is teeming with germs. Take your kids home."

Pablo pushed Fred into the room.

Candace barreled on, "They keep trying to give him high cholesterol omelets and high-calorie puddings. If he eats like that, he'll be as big as a barn and end up in a wheelchair for life."

Fred just smiled from his wheelchair.

Strained looks on the St. Gidget's staff's faces indicated they were tired of Arnold and his shrew. Alice decided the best thing to do was take Candace to the cafeteria for dinner while Fred and Arnold caught up. They were good buddies. Beatrice and the kids tagged along.

Halfway there, Alice realized she had forgotten her purse and went back for it. As she neared Arnold's room, a burst of male laughter made her stop outside the door.

In a more animated tone than she'd ever heard him use in her twenty-year acquaintance with him, Arnold was saying, "And you know what's so funny? She really believes I was reading that Playboy on the ladder! Please! I really thought Candace would have seen through that story by now. And can you believe Candace didn't hear Felicity laughing outside? Man, I'm sure glad Felicity took the manual with her. Position 26A was really something before I fell flat on my ass."

Whoa. "Position 26A" hadn't come from a yoga book or a ballroom dance manual. More like The Joy of Sex or the Kama Sutra.

On her way back toward the cafeteria, Alice debated telling Candace what she'd heard. A younger Alice would have done so. But this Alice realized no amount of early knowledge had helped her own marriage, and she doubted any would heal Candace's. Besides that, Arnold finally seemed happy. Devious, broken, adulterous, but happy. Alice couldn't bring herself to blow the whistle.

Was she getting soft on adulterous assholes? Or had she finally let go of Dirk? Well, she still didn't want to imagine Dirk and Miss Double-N's using any manuals. Not yet. Not ever. But if downtrodden Arnold could become surprisingly happy after forty, then so could she. And she was starting not to care exactly how that happened.

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