Heat, 1977
The house was too big. No matter how many Chinese shoe trees or Turkish prayer rugs, embroidered pillows from forgotten Irish counties, Balinese puppets, Deruta pottery, or African dung sculptures happened to rest in surprising corners of the place, the house never felt quite full. Alice watched her mother notice this each time she returned—the house and its emptiness always appeared to register as sheer surprise. The Greens lived in a large house. They lived in a house on the water, in a cove shared with oysters, glass-green seaweed, broken bottles, and bloated prophylactics. Alice lived with her brother and father and mother in a house sea-damaged and in a constant state of not-quite-fashionable disrepair.
Since the day the Greens had moved in nearly seven years ago, Charlotte hadn’t stopped attempting to fill the house with objects. She went away to find more objects, was how it seemed to Alice, who, along with her father and brother, was always waiting for her to come home. That was why it felt so empty to Charlotte each time that she returned. The house … it had filled up years ago; they didn’t need another thing—and Charlotte knew they were waiting; she had to have known. It was only her presence that was missing. She must have known every time.
In between the afternoon and evening, it seemed to Alice that the world was running out of energy. The sun felt like a legend—forcing people to get things done, day after dismal day. It was cold near the window, even under two sweaters, but Alice still couldn’t tear herself away from watching the day fade. The March skies looked like the skin around her mother’s eyes, like the dregs of her mother’s milky Bengali tea. She found herself standing in front of her parents’ bedroom window, watching her breath condense on the windowpane. The sky drained slowly as she anticipated the sight of her father’s car coming home from the lab. Alice’s father was a scientist, a professor of neurobiology, and he spent days at a lab where he acquired the scent of blood and floor wax, and worked sometimes for hours without so much as a cup of coffee, without a single bite to eat. She wanted to give her father an especially warm welcome, to distract him from realizing the heat still wasn’t turned on and that Charlotte hadn’t returned. Alice made twenty-three marks in the window’s fog, one mark for each day her mother had been gone. Today—her father didn’t like to promise—today the chances were good that she’d wrapped everything up and that she would be coming home from the airport, arriving before four. The clock said five-thirty. They’d all been wary anyway. Her mother made schedules but rarely did she adhere to them.
Alice turned from the window and sat at Charlotte’s table. She bypassed the stamped tin box filled with jade beads and silver, overlooked the crackled hand mirror and the 1920s button rings. She sprayed the Must de Cartier in the air, and then ran through it like a sprinkler in the heat of summer. In the third drawer on the left-hand side of the table, she found the black pearl earrings. They sat on an ivory silk cloth with a purple ink stain, as if they were no more than two good seeds, waiting to be scattered. They clipped painfully onto her ears and she sat for moments trying to imagine having the strength to endure that kind of pain for any length of time. That was how Alice would know she was grown: the black pearls would clip onto her ears and she wouldn’t have a thought in her head.
She took off the earrings when they began to burn and put them back as she had always done. Thin sounds of the babysitter talking on the phone floated through the door, like a brighter other day. The baby-sitter was cheerful and put on fake foreign accents, which were wholly unrecognizable. Down the hall, the TV was going and August was laughing. She could picture her brother laughing alone, laughing hard and loud, not noticing how dark the room was, or that their parents weren’t home. He might not even have noticed the cold.
When Alice heard the tires on the gravel, she almost ran out of the room and straight out the front door, but instead she went back to the window. It was possible that her mother was in the car with him. He might have picked her up at the airport. He might have had the time. Everything seemed to slow down as she looked out the window and watched the car, so small from this vantage, so weak next to the thick and massive trees. The shadows were taking over, going from evening to night, and Charlotte was not among them. Her father got out of the car in three distinct movements. He looked up at the roof and Alice waved but he didn’t seem to notice. He went for the front door and Alice ran downstairs when she couldn’t see him anymore.
“Hi, Daddy,” Alice said from the foot of the stairs. It always felt a little funny calling him Daddy; it made her feel like a baby, but she thought it sounded sweet.
“Hey honey,” he said softly, having hung his big coat on a rusted hook. He wore a turtleneck sweater the color of soil. “How you doin’ over there?”
“It’s freezing,” Alice said. It just came out, the exact last thing she had planned on saying.
Her father didn’t come over and rub her arms. “Well,” her father said, “put on another sweater then. It’s healthier to wear layers than have the heat jacked up indoors. You know that.” He ran his broad hand over his face. All he wanted, Alice could tell, was a drink and some sleep. “Where’s August?” he asked.
“Gus,” Alice yelled.
Her father put his hand on her back. They walked toward the kitchen, her father flicking switches, frowning, whenever there was no light, at how many bulbs needed changing.
The baby-sitter, Melanie, was breathless with urgency, a quality many people acquired when talking to her father. He was often distracted and took an unnaturally long time to explain things. “So I have to go, Dr. Green. I’m glad you’re home,” she said, sticking a slew of papers out for Alice’s father. “Urn, listen, here are some messages? You should take a look at these; they’re from Con Ed—kind of important?” Melanie glanced at Alice before deciding to stop right there.
“Yes?”
“I’ve gotta go,” she said, and, after thrusting the papers in his hand, gave Alice a pat on the head and ran out the back door.
“Gus,” Alice yelled. “Gus.“ Her hair was full of static now, thanks to Melanie’s hand.
“Shh,” her father said, “go easy.” He read one message, set the rest down, and poured himself a Scotch. Then he patted her shoulder as he took a sip. Everyone was always patting her. It was what people did when they were lazy, like how her mother left pennies scattered on the floor though they were perfectly valuable coins. Alice began setting the kitchen table for three. She was good at remembering where everything went. Gus always ended up putting out dessert forks and spoons instead of knives, using good linens for a grilled cheese sandwich. There was dinner in the refrigerator that her father stuck in the microwave. They stood there waiting for the beep, waiting for August to show.
“You doing anything new in school?” her father asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “War.”
He laughed in a kind of grimace, as though he’d remembered a poorly told joke. “You sweet girl,” he said absently. She wondered if he’d been listening.
She closed her eyes and willed Gus to come down.
“Get. Down. Here,” her father yelled. “Gus.” His yelling was like a change in the weather—something you couldn’t anticipate, even if you tried. “And no winter coat at the table.” From the microwave came the scent of burned butter and something green.
Gus finally came down the back stairs. The parka was on him and zipped up good with the T-bar zipper silver and strong. “Evening,” Gus said, imitating someone, but Alice didn’t know whom.
“He’s just cold,” Alice said.
“You want to wear your coat too?” Her father’s voice sounded so tight it was almost foreign.
“No,” Alice said, and wandered back to the table. Out the bay window in the dining area there was no ocean to see. It was pitch-black, without stars.
Her mother was stealing the brightest light. Wherever she was, Alice knew this: It was still daytime.
Gus came to her side and said, “What are we eating?” It was his way of being nice. She thought her brother smelled like hot cider after you drank it, when you breathed into the cup to get warm.
“Chicken,” her father said.
“Chicken,” Alice said, and smiled because of the way it sounded, so ordinary and dumb.
She went into the bathroom to wash her hands, waiting for the water to get very hot. Her father started banging some pots around, the way he did when he was looking for something and wanted someone to notice, and she thought of her mother last summer, handing him towels, handing him zinc for his nose. She lay on the beach, the same place each day, squeezing lemons in her hair. She rented everybody bicycles and remembered the return date. There were no overdue books or unpaid bills. Sometimes she was up before ten.
“I just don’t see the big deal,” Gus was saying. “Why do you care what I wear?”
Her father said something she couldn’t hear, and Gus said something back, speaking equally softly, which made Alice nervous. She swung open the door and tried to catch them talking, but her father was pouring two glasses of milk and refilling his Scotch, and Gus was sitting at the table, still in his parka, his dark hair flopped over his forehead. Alice noticed that his hands were kind of crusty and covered in pen marks.
Dinner was chicken with yellow rice with almonds and raisins and broccoli. Mrs. Holterbach made it. Mrs. Holterbach was their piano teacher, who for some reason was always bringing food whenever Charlotte was gone. Alice could always taste when it was Mrs. Holterbach’s food; her idea of dessert was baked apples stuffed with peanut butter and raisins. Everything had raisins. Sometimes, when her father was in a certain mood, he’d order a pizza. Once in a great while he’d make steaks. Last week they’d gone to McDonald’s, but he had gotten depressed in the car ride home and started talking about apartheid.
Alice sat down, and her father did too. She felt like saying thanks.
“Hand me your plate,” her father said. Alice wondered what Gus had said in order to keep his parka on. It really was cold in the house; it had been for days now. Sometimes Alice’s fingers pruned and she showed no one. Sometimes she ate more just to keep her teeth from chattering. She wanted to ask her father why it was so cold in the house, but she didn’t because she had made a promise to herself. When things were tense, when her mother was gone, she swore that she, Alice, would be good. People had big problems—they were blind, deaf, they had bombs in their countries, they had nothing but pain. Alice would be an easy girl.
“I miss Bo,” Alice said, searching for something to sound good, but Gus just shrugged. “Do you think we might get another dog?”
“You never know,” her father said, sounding doubtful. “Go on and eat, Alice. Aren’t you hungry?”
“She eats so slow,” Gus said.
“Don’t talk about me in front of me,” Alice said, suddenly hot in the face. “I am eating normal.”
“I know,” her father said. “Don’t let him bother you.”
“Look at her plate,” Gus said, laughing.
“What,” she said so hard it was like a cough. She looked down and there were the raisins in a line.
“She’s afraid of the raisins, Dad. She thinks they’re bugs.”
“I do not,” Alice said, feeling a warm sob in her stomach. “Why are you wearing that stupid jacket}” She forced the sob to remain underground, to not spill over.
“You know what?” her father said, his fork hanging between his fingers like a pendulum. “I have a massive headache that is getting worse each and every second.”
There was quiet. Alice tried to think if she ever got headaches. All she could remember was her high fever when her mother fed her and bathed her and sang all of her songs. She wished Bo were alive. He would lick her fingers. He’d eat her raisins and sit at her side, looking up with round eyes. She pictured her whole family as dogs instead of people; it was something she wished for; there was something comforting about the thought of barking all night and never understanding a word.
“Enough,” her father said, his voice gravelly and loose. “Take that goddamned winter coat off. This second.”
Gus finished the last of his yellow rice. “It’s called a parka,” he said.
“Take off the fucking coat.”
“Dad …” Alice felt her face splotching with red. She felt ashamed.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said to her. “But I can’t,” he said to no one in particular. “Not tonight. I said take it off.”
“The heat,” her brother said. She was surprised how much like whining it sounded. He never, ever whined. “Maybe if the heat was on I could eat without my coat on.”
“It looks stupid,” Alice said, trying to help. “You look like some kind of—”
“I’m going to count to ten,” her father said, slicing a wing, “and if that coat is not off—”
“What?” Gus asked. “What will be my punishment?” he asked, as if he really wanted one.
Alice wanted to get another sweater, but she was afraid that if she left the table, they would start speaking quietly again, and she’d never know what they’d said. Tonight she’d made sure not to appear bulky, not to wear too many sweaters, because she knew her father would think she was being dramatic or maybe even insulting him. She didn’t want to be insulting, so she didn’t go get another sweater and she ate the broccoli and rice. The chicken tasted good, but she was so cold it was hard to enjoy it. Her father sipped his Scotch.
Gus put his hood up.
“What is he doing?” her father asked Alice.
Gus looked at her and said, “My ears.”
“Please,” Alice said, looking straight ahead, out at the dull black night. She pictured heavy waves throwing themselves at each other way out beyond the cove. “Just,” she said, “stop.”
“My ears are cold,” he said; then he snapped the chin flap shut, so there was only a little piece of Gus for anyone to see. The ski tags—there must have been five of them—jutted out from his chin, where the zipper was. He continued eating, neatly stuffing food down behind the chin flap into his mouth. The parka was one of the puffiest parkas Alice had ever seen.
“Alice,” her father said, and her stomach shot clear to her knees, “you’d like some dessert, right?”
Alice nodded, twisting her napkin, not sure if she should be nodding. Maybe she should have said it didn’t matter to her, that she didn’t need anything.
“No one …” her father said, and then he lost his steam.
He stared at Gus and Gus stared back. Her father’s eyes were low blue flames. Gus had eyes like embers. Alice didn’t know where to look, so she returned her gaze outside. But this time she noticed her reflection in addition to the dark. She wondered if it had been there all along.
“Please,” Alice said, but the sound just dissolved in the air.
Her father’s vein stood out on his forehead. It looked like a little worm. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You have no idea.” The way he said it felt like the middle of the night, when everything seemed dead.
Gus put down his fork and knife. He folded his hands in his lap. Alice thought he’d say “Sorry” but he just kept staring at her father, as if it were the first time he’d really looked.
They looked nothing alike.
Nobody ate more. Nobody spoke. Alice wanted a dog. She wanted her Bo back, his enthusiastic breathing. She wanted dessert and heat and her mother. It was so quiet, with the wind picking up outside, with the unseen trees whipping skinny branches up against the glass.
Her father took his last sip of Scotch, and crunched an ice cube between his teeth, which must have hurt because he sprayed some Scotch across the table and suddenly began to laugh. The air smelled like the nurse’s office for a second, like the art-room sink at school. Gus started laughing the way he did when he watched TV, high-pitched and hysterical and shaking so hard that his parka made all kinds of swishing sounds. Alice didn’t laugh but she breathed. She breathed so deeply that it felt like laughing. She felt light all through her head.
Her father was shaking his head, laughing through his words: “You’re such an ungrateful kind of kid,” he said, rubbing his face. “It’s okay what do you know? You don’t know. What can I do about that? That’s fine.” Her father had a big smile on his face and he looked from one child to the other. Gus’s eyes were still bright. Her father’s face went red, as if he’d just returned from a long walk, and he took a breath through his nose as if he were about to dive off a high board for the very first time. Sound came from him in a short, loud burst, and then, after a few dry inhalations, her father began to cry. And through the hood that Gus had saved up wearing until tonight, the night that their mother Charlotte was supposed to have returned, Alice could see he wasn’t sorry exactly, but surprised. Maybe it was enough, maybe it was enough for then, because their father asked Alice to play the piano, and when she said no, when she said that she was cold and that she knew that her mother had screwed up the heating bill, that she always did things like that, her father asked if anyone was going to eat some ice cream or what. Gus unsnapped his chin flap and took down his hood.
“I’ll take it off,” her brother said.