Then
Alice didn’t see Gina again that summer, not after that time they went swimming. She had denied that she was sleeping with Jake, of course, but it was painfully clear that Gina didn’t believe her, especially when, after they’d come in from the water, Jake had acted so strange, insisting on wrapping Alice’s towel around her. He’d also stared a little too long at Gina, barely covered by Alice’s bikini bottoms and the T-shirt plastered to her chest.
That fall, Jake and Alice drove to Canada, visiting Montreal and Quebec City. “Almost as good as France,” Jake said. “And a lot less expensive.” It was one of the few times that Jake ever mentioned money. Alice had always assumed that because Jake worked in a bank and wore nice suits, and their condo had a view of the water, they were rich and that money would never be a problem. It didn’t matter. Montreal was the most sophisticated place Alice had ever been to. They walked the city in the daytime, stopping into shops, and went to the best restaurants at night. Quebec City was even better, almost magical. They stayed at Le Château Frontenac, more of a castle, really, than a hotel. They ordered wine everywhere they went, and no one ever questioned Alice’s age. Maybe some of the hotel staff and waitresses looked at them together and thought they were father and daughter, but no one ever said anything about it. On the final night of their trip, on the boardwalk in Quebec City, Jake put his arm around Alice’s shoulders as they walked, something he’d never done before. “Let’s come back here next year,” Alice said. “This is better than France.”
“Don’t you want to visit other cities? You haven’t been to New York yet, have you?”
“Ugh. No thanks,” Alice said, thinking of Gina, and what it would be like to run into her if she was with Jake. She still couldn’t get the image of Jake, and the way he’d looked at Gina on the beach, out of her mind.
Over the winter, Alice got a part-time job at a drugstore in Kennewick Center. Jake had brought it up, asking Alice if she was bored just taking classes and spending time at home. “No, not really,” she said.
“It doesn’t bother you that you spend so little time with other people?”
Alice frowned and thought about it. “I spend time with professors, and I talk with other students, but you know I’d rather be here with you.”
“I know, I was just . . .” He trailed off.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great. I just wanted to make sure that everything is great with you as well. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t think you were missing out on things other girls your age do. Like go to parties. And have jobs.”
“I definitely don’t miss going to parties. That’s for sure. I hadn’t really thought about a job. Do you think I should get one?”
“I think you should if you want to. You don’t need to, obviously, but I had the thought. They’re hiring at Blethen’s Apothecary.”
She’d applied and been hired at the end of her interview by a manager not a whole lot older than she was, a stutterer named Jeff who was almost skeletally thin. She’d thought she’d hate the job, especially after Jeff informed her that treating customers with respect was her number one priority, but she turned out to love it, even the menial tasks, like restocking the shelves, making sure that everything along the row was displayed neatly and perfectly. She liked this part of the job actually better than running the cash register, but she didn’t even mind that. Her favorite part was cashing out at the end of her shift, adding up the register contents against the receipts, making sure it balanced. She didn’t mind dealing with the customers, but she didn’t like when people recognized her from high school, either old classmates or past teachers. They always asked her what she was doing now, and she’d say that she was taking classes at MCC, and sometimes, though not often, they’d ask her where she was living, and she would simply say that she was still at home. A couple of times, she saw the memory that her mother had died pass across their features. They would blush, or avert their eyes, not knowing what to say. It was awkward, but it didn’t last, and most of the time she never saw them again.
That was not the case with Mrs. Bergeron, Gina’s mother, who came in frequently and always sought out Alice, asking her how she was doing, and telling her all about Gina as though the two of them were still best friends. “She had to drop out of NYU because she just couldn’t keep up with her courses and her modeling schedule at the same time. My husband said that she should have dropped some of her modeling work, but I said, well, she can always go back to school and finish, and she won’t always be able to be a model. I mean, strike while the going is good, right?” She reminded Alice so much of Gina, the way her words would speed up while she was talking, ending her sentences by taking a deep breath.
Once, when Alice was working in the deodorant and bodywash aisle, Mrs. Bergeron, visibly elated, approached her holding the latest copy of Cosmopolitan.
“You’re not going to believe this, Alice,” she said, thumbing the issue open to an ad for Jordache, and there was Gina, in high-cut shorts and long socks with two other girls in what was supposed to be a high school cafeteria. The ad was selling a new line of knitted socks, and Mrs. Bergeron said, “She also did a session for jeans, but doesn’t know if they’re going to use those pictures yet. Can you believe it?”
Alice did believe it—she’d always known Gina was going to be a star—but shook her head at Mrs. Bergeron and said, “Amazing.”
“I know, right? I might have to buy every last copy.”
Gina’s mother ended up buying most of the copies, but not quite all of them, and Alice took one home with her, first reading the magazine cover to cover while Jake watched a hockey game, then later, cutting out the ad, and hiding it in the desk in her old bedroom. She kept wondering if Gina was happy, and if she had a nice boyfriend now that she was a model. It was a possibility, but she doubted it. Gina looked very skinny in the ad, and Alice wondered what kinds of drugs she was taking.
Over the following year, Gina went from appearing in the Jordache socks ad with two other models to appearing in a denim campaign all by herself, wearing skintight jeans and an unbuttoned silk blouse. Mrs. Bergeron informed Alice that Gina had started to book runway shows, and magazine layouts, and was going by the professional name of simply Bijou. “You should visit her, Alice,” she would say. “She’d love that.”
“I’m pretty busy up here,” Alice would reply.
“I’m sure they’d let you take a few days off from work, and your stepfather . . . he wouldn’t care if you spent some time in New York, would he?”
Whenever Mrs. Bergeron mentioned Jake—always calling him “your stepfather”—Alice could hear the disdain in her voice. It was obvious that Gina had told her mother that she thought Alice was sexually involved with Jake, and that her mother disapproved. “I have school, too,” Alice said.
“Not in the summer you don’t. Look, if it’s money, I’d be happy to buy you a train ticket to go down. Tell the truth, you’d be doing me and Don a favor, just to have you check on her. She could use a friend from home, I’m sure.”
“I’ll think about it,” Alice always said, the words that would end the conversation.
In truth, Mrs. Bergeron’s pleas to Alice to visit her daughter in New York made Alice feel good. It was clear that something was wrong, that the modeling life wasn’t all nice restaurants, and handsome men, and glittering New York parties. Was Gina falling apart? Alice began to imagine visiting her, finding her drug addicted and abused in some grungy loft apartment downtown like the ones in Desperately Seeking Susan. Gina would be miserable, track marks up and down her arms, constantly crying. This became one of Alice’s favorite stories to tell herself, so much so that she began to seriously consider visiting Gina in New York, to make it actually happen.
She never went, but in early fall, before the beginning of her junior year at college, Mrs. Bergeron came into the drugstore to tell Alice that Gina was coming home for a few weeks, that she was simply exhausted from all the work and needed a break. “You’ll come over some night, won’t you, Alice?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Okay,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “But I’m going to keep asking, whether you like it or not.” She waved a finger at Alice but she was smiling, an impossibly wide, toothy grin that Gina had inherited. She did keep asking, and finally Alice relented, a Friday night in late September, because both Mrs. Bergeron and Gina showed up at the drugstore and begged her to come over for dinner that night.
“Do you have plans?” Gina asked. “If you have plans, then . . .”
Alice did have plans, but only with Jake. It was a Friday night, which meant he would return home with flowers or a nice bottle of wine. Sometimes he would stop at the new video store that had opened up over in York and pick out a movie to watch. But, even so, he’d probably be okay with Alice going to dinner at the Bergerons’. Well, not okay, exactly, but he’d be stoic about it. Alice just wanted to go in order to get it over with. If she didn’t go tonight, they would keep pestering her. “Okay, I’ll come tonight,” she said.
“Yay,” both Gina and her mother said at the same time.
“God, it’s sloppy joes tonight, but they’re homemade, at least,” Mrs. Bergeron said.
“My favorite,” Gina said, stretching out the vowels.
That night Jake came back from the bank with a large bottle of white zinfandel but no flowers and no movie. He seemed tired, and when Alice told him she was thinking of going over to the Bergerons’ for dinner he made a face but didn’t say anything negative. Right before she left, however, he said to her: “You won’t tell them anything, will you? About us?”
“I won’t, but don’t you think . . . I mean, it’s been two years, and I’m a grown woman now.”
“Trust me, Alice, they won’t understand. They’ll think that I’m taking advantage of you. We live in America. We were founded by Puritans. In other countries, they would totally understand what was going on between us, but not here.”
“I won’t tell them anything. I wouldn’t have, anyway. It’s none of their business.”
Alice drove Jake’s car across town, listening to the tape he’d left in the deck. It was Genesis, Phil Collins singing the word Mama over and over again. She got tired of it, and sped ahead to “That’s All.” After she pulled into the Bergerons’ driveway, she listened to the rest of the song, the sky a deep, dusky blue over the Bergerons’ house, its first floor brick and its second story painted yellow, the windows with black shutters. The front yard was brown from the summer drought, and with a scattering of orange pine needles. As the song finished, Alice wondered if tonight was the beginning of the story of Gina’s fall from grace. What had Gina’s mother said, that she was “exhausted”? Alice shut the car off.
Gina didn’t seem exhausted during dinner. If anything, she seemed a little hyper, constantly interrupting anything anyone else was saying to get her own word in, pushing her food around the plate, cutting her sloppy joe into bite-sized pieces with her fork and knife, something the rest of the family made fun of her for.
“You want chopsticks for that, G?” her father asked. “She eats sushi now,” he said to Alice.
“Everyone eats sushi, Dad,” Gina said.
“Not in Maine. We cook our fish up here.”
“High five,” Gina’s youngest sister said and slapped Mr. Bergeron’s palm.
Alice kept mostly silent during the meal, except when she was asked direct questions, either about her job at the drugstore or the courses she was taking at MCC. No one asked her about Jake, and what he was up to, at least not at the dinner table. She felt strange during dinner, not uncomfortable exactly, but like an alien that had been dropped into a typical American family, full of inside jokes and overlapping conversation. It was different, so much louder, than what she was used to with Jake, just the two of them, everything perfect and civilized. A small part of her was jealous, only because there was something relaxing about not always being the center of attention, not always having eyes on you, but then Alice looked at Gina, the way her eyes were darting between members of her family, her fingers tugging on one of her earlobes till it had turned an angry red, and she thought: No, family life is messy, and unpredictable. Who would want that?
After dinner, when the two youngest girls were tasked with clearing the table, Alice caught Gina giving her mother a quick glance, then saying, awkwardly, “New rule: the grown women get the night off cleaning.”
“New rule?” Mr. Bergeron said.
Gina was standing. “Come on, Alice, let’s go outside a minute.”
“Gotta get her fix,” said Gina’s younger sister, pantomiming taking a puff of a cigarette.
“I’ll come, too,” said Mrs. Bergeron, as Alice rose from the table, suddenly nervous.
It was balmy outside for September, the dark sky filled with stars. Gina did light up a cigarette before the back screen door slammed shut, then took a seat on one of the patio chairs. She offered the pack to Alice, who turned it down.
“Smart girl,” said Mrs. Bergeron, leaning against the outdoor table.
Alice sat next to Gina on the very edge of a chair. She said how much she’d enjoyed dinner, then immediately asked about Gina’s oldest brother, Howie, who hadn’t been there that night. She just wanted to keep asking questions to avoid the discussion that she felt was coming. Mrs. Bergeron said that Howie was doing the backpack thing in Europe, and she wondered if he’d ever return. While she spoke, Alice felt Gina’s eyes on her. She turned toward her just as she was snuffing the butt of her cigarette out against the bottom of her sandal.
“You should—” Alice began, but Gina interrupted her.
“Alice, I want to talk about Jake.”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Bergeron.
“Okay,” said Alice. She could feel the blood rushing into her face, her skin heating up.
“We both think it’s really strange that you’re still living with him,” Gina said, removing another cigarette from her pack of Parliaments. “I know that he’s your stepdad, but it’s not like he was with your mom for a really long time. You’ve lived with him longer than he lived with your mother.”
“Where else am I supposed to go?” Alice said, anger causing her chest to tighten, and her words to come out sounding slightly pinched. “I don’t have a family. He pays for my classes, Gina.”
“We’re not judging you, honey,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “We’re worried that Jake is taking advantage of you, and if he is, we want you to know that you have options.”
“What do you mean?”
Gina said, “You remember Maddy, right? She said she saw you at a restaurant in Portland with Jake and that you were acting like a couple.”
“What does she mean we were acting like a couple?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “What we want to know is that you are comfortable with whatever situation you’re in. That’s all. If you tell us that you and Jake are happy together, I mean, who are we—”
“I don’t care if you are happy together,” Gina said, shouting a little. “It’s gross, Alice. You’re a young, beautiful girl, and you let that fucking creep have his way with you.”
“Gina . . .” said Mrs. Bergeron.
Alice stood up. She felt tears pricking at her eyes, and really didn’t want to cry. She quickly scanned the fenced backyard, like a cat looking for an exit, then began to walk toward the latched door that led onto the driveway. Gina ran after her.
“Sorry, Alice, come back. We just want to talk with you.”
Alice kept walking, not trusting her voice. When she reached the door, Gina grabbed her shoulder. Alice, without thinking, spun and grabbed Gina’s hand, pulling it to her mouth and biting down at the base of Gina’s thumb. Gina screamed and yanked her hand back. For a moment, they both stood there, Gina grasping her hand, and Alice frozen, shocked that she’d actually bitten Gina. Mrs. Bergeron had jumped up after hearing Gina scream, and was coming toward them, saying, “What is it? What happened?” Alice pushed through the door and ran to the car. She could taste Gina’s blood in her mouth.
When she got back home, Jake was still up, glassy-eyed, watching television, a snifter with brandy on one of his knees. “How was it?” he asked.
“Fine,” Alice said.
“What did they serve?”
“Sloppy joes,” she said, and Jake smiled. “It was kind of a scene, honestly, everyone talking over everyone else. I missed being here.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Jake said, adjusting the chair so that he could get out of it comfortably, almost spilling his drink. “Let’s get into bed.”
Alice went up the stairs, feeling good about controlling her feelings in front of Jake. During the drive back in the car, she told herself that she’d barely even bitten Gina, that her teeth had only just broken the skin, and that it had been Gina’s fault anyway. Gina was the one who’d grabbed her violently, and she had just been trying to get away. It was nothing. And then she told herself that the conversation in the backyard hadn’t actually happened, and that the night was merely annoying. If she believed that, it kept the anger she felt toward Gina from rising up in her and making her want to scream. She brushed her teeth, then changed into pajama bottoms and a threadbare T-shirt.
Under the covers, she carefully composed her body, shut her eyes, and began to try to relax. It had been a nice dinner at Gina’s family’s house. Nothing more. But the words she’d tried to erase kept coming back. Gina calling Jake “that fucking creep.” Mrs. Bergeron’s condescending tone, talking to Alice like she was some little girl. And then she remembered the feeling when she’d bitten down on Gina’s hand. Her body was so tight that it was beginning to tremble. While Jake was applying his face cream in the bathroom, Alice slid out from the covers and got off the bed. “Want anything from downstairs?” she asked Jake, and he shook his head.
In the kitchen she made herself a White Russian, heavy on the vodka, and told herself to drink it slowly, to not be like her mother. She drank half of it in short, small sips, and began to feel better. Of course they’d be critical. They didn’t know what she had with Jake. Or maybe they did know, and they were just jealous. That made a lot more sense. As she was making herself a second drink, she heard a very light tapping and thought for a moment that Jake was coming down the stairs. She stepped out into the living room. There was the tapping sound again, and she realized someone was knocking on the door. She went and peered through the eyehole. It was Gina.