boys might make if they were given free reign in the kitchen. But she’d rather clean up than cook because she has no patience with recipes, just as she had no patience with the strictures of art class in college. So now she and the boys eat heat-and-serve meals, none of it particularly good or healthy. But it will do for now. Everything about their life is similarly provisional, qualified by the unspoken “for now.”
She hates that she has let this happen. Which is why Doug’s party matters. It’s got to be right.
Pounding on her trailer door startles her. Before answering, she sets the half-empty blender carafe in the sink, then surveys her chaotic surroundings, which elicits from her one long sigh. There’s too much to clean up so she won’t even try. When she opens the door, she is surprised to see her best friend, Gayla. Tall and full-figured, Gayla has the broad shoulders of a swimmer and the gold-brown complexion of her Jamaican grandmother, though she herself grew up in Evanston, Illinois. She is the high school vice principal.
Right, Alison remembers: school.
“You know what time it is?” Gayla asks.
The day’s heat roars through the open door.
Alison glances down at her own unadorned wrists. She used to own a watch but can’t recall what happened to it. “Lunch time,” she says at last, sounding as mindless as one of her students.
“An hour ago,” Gayla says. “I don’t know why I still cover for you.”
“Because you love me, Gayla.” Alison attempts a smile.
“I can’t love you that hard, girl. Not like this. Let’s go.”
“It’s one of those days,” Alison says. She locks the door behind her.
“Don’t even start,” Gayla says. She opens her bamboo-handled sunbrella, then sets the pace with a determined stride, her braids swinging.
The roadways among the trailers are sandy and half-shaded with palms. Alison has always liked them for a stroll with her boys.
“You see your therapist this week?” Gayla asks.
Alison listens to the lap and crush of waves returning on the tide. Some mornings the lagoon is as calm as a lake. She says, “I quit therapy.”
“Oh, that’s smart!”
“Be nice to me,” Alison says.
“I’m being too nice and you know it. Keep on like this and you’ve got maybe one more warning before you lose your job.”
“They’d fire me at this point in the semester?”
“It’s been done before.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Alison says quietly.
“Won’t you?” Gayla sounds hurt, nearly in tears, which isn’t like her. Wonder Woman, Alison has called her in jest. She is very much like Alison’s bother, Eddie: focused, self-directed, authoritative, accomplished. Gayla is the woman Alison will never be. But Alison can make Gayla laugh. She is the yin to Gayla’s yang. Their husbands worked together at the weather station.
“No, I won’t let that happen,” Alison says. “I’ve got plans.”
“Plans?” Gayla turns a curious gaze to her.
“Yes!” Alison lies. “I’ve applied for a masters program in Art Ed.”
Gayla’s voice skids into falsetto: “Since when?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.”
“What school?”
“Online, through the University of Wisconsin.” These answers come unbidden, easily, and the lie brings a thrill similar to her abuse of Emil: the world’s possibilities open in perversely gratifying ways. Oh, how she hates herself!
“You’ve been accepted into the program?” Gayla asks.
“Yes!” Alison says matter-of-factly. “I start studies at the end of the month.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Gayla says cautiously. They step onto the asphalt of Pacific Drive. “You’re excited, right?”
“Of course I am! “Alison lies, lies, lies. “I’m getting some focus, I’m marching into the future—progress is my middle name!”
“Smart ass.”
Suddenly Alison pictures herself spanking Emil’s hairy white ass.
She hears a sudden pop behind her, like a hand smacked across someone’s face. When she turns for a glance, Alison sees that a gull has just dropped a slate-colored crab to the asphalt. Miraculously, the crab has survived. Dragging one damaged leg, it scurries into the shade of nearby weeds. Then the gull touches down on the asphalt, tucks its wings in, pivots its gleaming white head, but can’t find its lunch. Head bobbing, it waddles to the shoulder of the road and blinks its beady eyes in confusion.
“Did you see that?” Alison asks. “Look back there.”
Gayla looks. “It’s a bird, Ali.”
Alison is about to explain the mini-drama she’s just witnessed but then decides there’s too much she can’t explain already.
“Want a mint?” She offers the roll to Gayla.
Gayla eyes the mints, then Alison with glum disdain. “You think that’s going to cover the alcohol on your breath?”
Alison feels a trickle of sweat spill from her scalp. She smells the ocean’s salt spray and the fish-stink of sun-baked coral and something else—maybe it’s the smolder of her burning heart. She says, “Sorry. I know I’m fucking up.”
Gayla lets her sunbrella collapse and steps into the shade of the school’s portico. “So you’ve told me about twenty times, hon’. I’m not asking for excuses, just don’t insult my intelligence.”
“I’m sorry!” Alison says quickly. “You know I love you for helping me.”
“Love isn’t enough, Ali. I’m risking my own job. Can you teach today or not?”
“I’m fine.” Alison attempts a smile. “Really.”
“Then get up there and do it. I’m not coming after you again.”
“Thanks.” Alison reaches for Gayla’s hand but Gayla is already walking away.
Yes, Alison thinks, that’s what I deserve. I’m shit.
When everyone on Kwajalein first learned of Erik’s “disappearance,” they swamped her email with condolences and crowded her kitchen with grilled chicken and potato salad and teriyaki steak and hummus and tabouli and cheese balls and three-bean salad and spinach lasagna. They approached her tentatively and spoke softly. She must have seemed as delicate to them as a kite caught in a tree. Alison was grateful for their time and attention but then, after a couple of months, when depression began to slow her down like a low-grade fever, she wondered about the growing distance between her and the rest of the world, especially those she thought were her friends. What did she have to offer anyone except her crushing tragedy? No wonder she felt so isolated, even shunned. She scared people, she realized. She was a drag.
“I’ve ruined it,” Alison told Gayla just five months after Erik’s death. “That’s what it is. I’ve ruined it for them!”
“They just feel awkward,” Gayla said.
“No,” Alison said. “It’s like I’ve smashed the windows of their tidy houses. They can hardly stand to look at me.”
“It’s a terrible tragedy, Ali. Nobody knows how to handle it.”
“You know,” Alison said. “You treat me like I’m still alive.”
Gayla nodded her