Alice lives in the in-between spaces, a mouse of a mousy woman the size of a breath mint or a breath, hiding herself at the moment before dramatic music echoes a few notes on a name that song game show or when a car flirts with another one for an instant on the interstate or when two strangers see each other for the first time across a crowded room with obligatory smoke in their eyes. When she moves to the beach into a tiny rented house that is too trendy and expensive, but also as far as she can walk to the ocean, and she needs that - there’s little left of her - a left brow and a left elbow stand out under blue dotted swiss and a slightly-dotty smile. Both of those features on the right side have evaporated because of the chemicals she is force fed three days a week with a side of Red Queen cards that Lewis ripple-shuffles because he used to be a Vegas croupier before they both jumped down the oncology rabbit hole of hard plastic chairs and hard plastic tubes. The beach will be kind to us Alice says to Lewis and the Thursday nurse who brings her warm honey buns and the good Jello, well-loved paperbacks and paper cups of tea with little notes on top that say eat me written in neat scrolling nurse script. Alice measures the days by the tide’s arrival and departures, in and out, like the music of the machines that whir and surf and tide in the sterile blue room that smells like ocean because the Monday nurse sells essential oils and wax melts in Ocean Breeze. The Monday multiple level marketing would usually anger Alice, but she hides in the artificial waves that hide her waves of nausea. Do you have that lovely smell in a candle too? Alice asks Monday Nurse, the one who wears red scrubs and mahogany hair, and before she knows it, she’s ordered a sample box of all things Ocean Breeze. Monday Nurse smiles and adds the form to her clipboard. When the box arrives a week later, Alice shrinks back into the space between the hotel ocean painting and Lewis’ now-vacant chair, holding her candle tightly.
Author's Note:
I wrote this flash in SmokeLong Summer (of course.) It began as a sensory exploration. I've had the title idea in my notes for a while without a plan behind it. I was listening to music and felt the spaces where songs dramatically pause or aren't started yet - little silent moments as listeners wait for a melody to start. From there, I moved to wondering about people in similar moments too. The spaces of wondering, waiting, grieving. What do we fill those anticipatory or in-between times with? Do we become the moments as we shrink to process them? My Alice was born from those ponderings. The Lewis Carroll story has always fascinated me. There's something in the book-Alice's journey that feels like a wonky way of dealing with change - but also an escapism. She's distracted momentarily by the cards, Queen, Mad Hatter, and tea party. My Alice has candles, books, and the ocean in her own waiting, upside-down, chaotic, sad space.
Amy Cipolla Barnes is the author of three collections: Mother Figures, Ambrotypes, and Child Craft. She edits and has words at many sites. A recent empty nester, she lives in the southern United States with her husband, dog. and tons of books.
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